It is very difficult to convince progressive Christians that Jesus did not do away with the ten commandments or that he never spoke of hell. Quoting scripture usually fails to convince.

Yesterday, the 6th Sunday in Ordinary time, the Gospel reading from Matthew 5:17-37 begins:

Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven. I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

In the course of his book, the Pope undertakes to combat a widespread notion in academic circles that Jesus is not presented as divine in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), but rather that Jesus is first portrayed as fully divine in the Gospel of John, which was written long after the other Gospels.

Rather than attacking this notion directly, the Pope lets someone else do the arguing for him: none other than Rabbi Jacob Neusner, one of the most prolific and widely-read American scholars of Judaism.”

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About Susan Kehoe

I am the wife of a Catholic deacon living in Des Moines Iowa. My husband Larry was ordained in 2006.
We have two children and five grandchildren.. Our daughter and her family live in Ireland, and our son and his family live in Franklin Massachusetts.